by Sarah Rayne
London, 1890s
Declan said, and Colm agreed, that whatever wild dreams they might have had of England and London, the reality beat the dreams into a cocked hat.
They did not, as Colm had half-seriously prophesied, actually have to sleep in ditches, but there were a couple of nights when they slept in houses so crowded and so dirty Declan said ditches might have been preferable.
‘Heaving with unwashed humanity,’ said Colm, as they left the second of these. ‘Wouldn’t you die for the scents of Kilderry – the ocean and the grass? But we’re almost there, and travelling like this – begging lifts, working as we go – shouldn’t take more than two days, so that man told me.’
It was an early evening when at last they walked into the city, and the sun was setting. The River Thames was directly ahead with, beyond it, the palace of Westminster, and there was a moment when the dying sun tipped the edges of the buildings with gold and seemed to set the river alight. For several enchanted moments they almost believed the glowing light was tangible – that it was molten gold pouring down over the stones and timbers and glass, and that it would lie in glistening pools on the pavements.
‘Golden pavements after all,’ said Declan, very softly, as they stood still, staring at it.
‘Not really, of course.’
‘Oh no.’
But the image of their childhood dreams was strongly with them, and there was an unreal quality to this final part of their journey, almost as if they might be entering a magical land where anything might happen and where whatever did happen would be wonderful.
As Colm said much later, the pity was that the feeling had not lasted.
At first the sheer size and noise and the crowds of people confused them and, curiously, it was Colm who faltered under the onslaught of London. But then Declan said they should remember this was the fabled city of their childhood dreams, and fabled cities were there to be conquered.
‘You’re right,’ said Colm, squaring his shoulders. ‘We’re on a quest, and we’ll find our way around this place somehow.’
‘We’ll start by asking directions to Holly Lodge,’ said Declan, firmly.
In the event, they had to ask several times, but in the end they found Holly Lodge, which was a large house in a street of large houses.
‘I hadn’t expected it to be so grand,’ said Colm. ‘Rich people live here, d’you think?’
‘I do. Or,’ said Declan, critically, ‘people who were once rich, but aren’t so much now.’
‘Yes. But,’ said Colm, frowning, ‘what will Romilly be doing here?’
‘Working? A housemaid?’ Declan said it doubtfully, because it was difficult to think of Romilly being servile, and yet what other work would there be for her? He did not say this, however, nor did he say that now they were actually here, in the fabled city of golden opportunities, it did not seem as if there would be much work for themselves, either.
They had not worked out a plan for when they actually reached Holly Lodge; they had simply concentrated all their energies on getting there.
This time it was Declan who faltered. He looked doubtfully up at the house and said, ‘What do we do now?’
‘We go up to the door right away, and ply the door knocker and I ask can I see my cousin. What could be wrong about that?’
‘Nothing in the world,’ said Declan.
They were both hoping that Romilly would open the door to them, but she did not. Instead they were confronted by a rather large lady with a fleshy face and curves imperfectly concealed by a scarlet gown. There was a moment when neither of the boys knew what to say, then the lady gave a slow smile, patted her improbably auburn hair with a be-ringed hand, and said, ‘My my, two new gentlemen. Young ones, as well. Looks like my Christmas ’as come early this year. Come inside, dear, and get acquainted with the ladies of the house.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Colm. ‘It’s a bloody knocking shop.’
Of all the things they had been expecting, this was the very last. They sat awkwardly in a large downstairs room with overstuffed sofas and flock wallpaper, and their hostess introduced herself as Flossie Totteridge – ‘Mrs Totteridge, I’m a widow woman’. She pressed upon them a series of refreshments, starting with Madeira, which she said the house kept specifically for the older gentlemen who visited, to sherry, which they might say was more of an afternoon drink, all the way down to gin, which was what the girls usually favoured.
‘We won’t take anything, thank you,’ said Colm. ‘We just want to know about my cousin, Romilly Rourke. To see her if we can. Is she here? Because she wrote to me—’
‘She was here, but she ain’t here now, more’s the pity, because the gentlemen liked her.’
‘I see,’ said Colm, and although his voice was perfectly ordinary, Declan could feel that he was raw with pain at having learned Romilly had been a prostitute. He thought they were both raw with pain.
‘All to do with her being Irish,’ said Flossie Totteridge. ‘Goes down well, Irish.’ She sent an appraising look at the two boys, particularly lingering on Colm.
‘Where did she go?’ said Colm, and Declan heard, with apprehension, that Colm’s voice had taken on a softer note.
Flossie Totteridge heard it as well, and sat up a little straighter. ‘I couldn’t say,’ she said. ‘I did hear she’d taken a room somewhere, but I don’t remember where.’
‘Would you try?’ said Colm, and now there was no doubt about the tone of his voice.
‘It’s no good, it’s gone. I’m a poor hand at remembering. It might have been Canning Town, but then again it might not.’
This meant nothing. Canning Town might have been anywhere in the world.
Declan said, ‘Would any of the . . . the girls know?’
‘They might.’ A speculative gleam came into Mrs Totteridge’s eye. ‘’Course, their time’s very valuable to me. I have to think of that. Gentlemen pay to spend time with my girls.’
Neither Colm nor Declan had any idea what a prostitute would cost, but the knowledge that they barely had enough for a night’s lodging passed between them.
‘But we might come to an arrangement,’ said Flossie. ‘With you being Romilly’s family, as it were.’ She reached out a pudgy hand and laid it over Colm’s.
Colm sat very still and then, to Declan’s disbelief, took her hand and smiled into her eyes. ‘What kind of arrangement had you in mind?’ he said.
‘Bit o’ company, maybe. An hour or so. It gets lonely here at times for me, and I was always partial to a bit of Irish.’
Something flickered behind Colm’s eyes. ‘That sounds a very reasonable idea,’ he said. ‘We could come back tomorrow. Would that give you time to question the girls?’
‘Come in the afternoon,’ said Flossie. ‘Afternoons are the time I get lonely, if you take my meaning.’
‘I do,’ said Colm. ‘Afternoon it is.’
Somehow he and Declan got themselves out of the house, and back on to the street.
‘You can’t go back there,’ said Declan, as they walked towards the cluster of shops and the smaller houses where they might find a cheap night’s lodging. ‘Colm, you can’t.’
‘I must. That’s where Romilly was living when she wrote that letter about being frightened. It’s the only link I have to her.’
‘But that woman – those girls . . .’
‘You think I can’t cope with one or two whores?’
‘Of course I don’t think that.’
They walked along the wide London street, scanning all the windows for notices advertising lodgings, resignedly going past the uncompromising ones that said ‘No Irish’, both trying to come to terms with the knowledge of how Romilly had been living all these weeks.
As they finally picked out a modest but clean-looking house that announced itself as having ‘Clean, comfortable lodgings for single, working gentlemen’, Declan knew that Colm would stop at very little to find Romilly and put right whatever had gone so dreadfully wrong in her l
ife.
He realized that he, too, would stop at very little when it came to Romilly Rourke.
TWELVE
The present
Michael was rather relieved when the main part of Christmas was over and he could start thinking about the forthcoming term. He had a very promising batch of first-year students, and he thought there were a couple of double-first possibilities among the final years. He had prepared some of his next term’s work, and had also written a new episode of Wilberforce to replace the rejected haunted house incident. The tutorials for his students included the influence of Andrew Marvell’s anti-monarchist sentiments on his later poetry; the Wilberforce episode included the mice wiring Wilberforce up to the electricity circuit after he had absent-mindedly sat on a cable and fused the lights.
Michael thought his final years would enjoy discussing Marvell’s rallying call to take up arms against the Stuart kings, and he thought the mice’s latest ploy would make for some good illustrations of Wilberforce with his fur standing on end. It would also serve as a warning to his youthful readers that it was dangerous to meddle with electricity. He sorted the Marvell notes into the appropriate folder, emailed the new Wilberforce chapter to his editor, and was aware of a pleasing sense of having completed some worthwhile work.
Immediately after Christmas he and Nell had put Beth on the plane for her American trip to Michael’s Maryland friends and his god-daughter. Beth would go to school with Ellie for three weeks, then return home for the remainder of the term at her English school. She was looking forward to seeing Ellie, wide-eyed with delight at the enormity of embarking on this grown-up adventure, and charmed to meet the stewardess who would oversee her journey and deliver her into the hands of Jack and Liz Harper at the other end. She was also almost speechless with pride over the brand-new notebook computer which had been a Christmas present; she had promised to email Nell every day on it, and she made Michael promise to send her the newest Wilberforce chapter so she and Ellie could read it.
Michael took Nell out to dinner that night and later, in bed, she cried and clung to him.
‘It’s the first time I’ve been parted from Beth since Brad died,’ she said. ‘I feel as if I’ve lost her.’
‘Oh, Nell, of course you haven’t lost her.’
‘I know that really – logically. But things do become lost,’ said Nell. ‘I lost Brad, and now I’ve lost Beth, even though it’s only for a while and . . . Michael, I won’t lose you, will I?’
It was so rare for her to display this kind of sudden and intense emotion and she sounded so much like Beth seeking reassurance that Michael’s heart turned over. He put his arms round her. ‘You won’t lose me, my dear love.’
‘You called me that right at the start,’ said Nell. ‘I do like to hear you say it. And of course I lose you some of the time, and that’s natural. When you’re absorbed in Andrew Marvell or Byron for instance – you aren’t really in the present day at all. That’s fine – it’s what you are. And I like you looking like one of the nineteenth-century romantics, and I like hearing about all the things you work out for your students.’
‘But none of that’s losing me, any more than I lose you when you’re absorbed in Chippendale or Hepplewhite.’
‘I wish I could get absorbed in Chippendale,’ said Nell, clearly feeling better. ‘If I found a set of his chairs or a desk I’d be so absorbed I probably wouldn’t speak for days. I’d love to find something really rare.’ There was a pause and Michael thought: now she’ll say something about that macabre chess piece from Benedict Doyle’s house.
But she did not. She smiled suddenly, and said, ‘Sorry for the high drama. I’ll try not to do it again. I know it fazes you a bit. You’re more at home with the emotional yearnings of eighteenth-century poets, really, aren’t you? The ones who languished over locks of hair or draped themselves over marble vaults.’
‘I can usually explain the languishings of the romantic poets quite well to my students,’ said Michael, rather apologetically. ‘What I can’t do is help them with their own entanglements.’
‘That’s because they’re part of the modern “Your place or mine?” culture,’ said Nell. ‘They probably don’t go in for sonnets or elegies.’
‘I think the girls might quite like a few sonnets. Do you know,’ said Michael, getting out of bed to refill their wine glasses, ‘far more girls than boys turn up in my study, to ask if I can explain a particular aspect of a poem or a sonnet to them.’
Nell said, ‘Do they really?’ and there was such amusement in her voice that Michael looked at her doubtfully. But she only said, in a more serious tone, ‘It’s all right, isn’t it? I mean – we’re all right, aren’t we?’
‘Yes,’ said Michael. ‘I think we’re very all right.’
She grinned and her eyes slanted so that she was no longer an insecure waif; she was a very mischievous imp.
‘Would you like to prove that with a demonstration?’ she said.
‘What a beautiful idea,’ said Michael, and got back into bed.
But two days later, the air of abstraction was back. Nell was not exactly distant, but her eyes seemed to be focused on something that was either deep in her mind or hundreds of miles away. Distant horizons, thought Michael. What’s that line about my soul longing to touch the dim distance? That’s how she looks – as if she’s longing to touch a dim distance. Am I going to lose her to a memory or a ghost?
But a few days after Christmas Nell asked, a bit diffidently, if Michael would like to come with her to visit Benedict Doyle.
‘He’s staying with Nina, and I ought to go and see him – if nothing else to meet him properly and talk about what we do with the contents of that house. But I think it might be a bit easier if you were there, as well.’
‘Of course I’ll come.’ Michael was pleased to be asked.
‘You’ll probably like Nina – you can’t always get a word in when she’s in full pelt, but she’s quite good company and she means well. She wants to meet you anyway.’
‘Does she?’ said Michael, surprised.
‘Well, I may have mentioned you to her,’ said Nell, offhandedly. ‘So she’s curious. Don’t smile like that; you look like Wilberforce when he’s stolen somebody’s fish supper.’
‘Have they got a diagnosis for Benedict yet?’ asked Michael, suppressing the smile.
‘Not quite, but Nina says they’re favouring – let me get this right – dissociative personality disorder. It sounds a bit sinister, doesn’t it?’
‘It sounds extremely sinister. What on earth is it?’
‘I think it’s sort of schizophrenia by another name.’
‘Other personalities seeming to take over?’
‘Yes – one personality in particularly, apparently.’
‘What kind of personality?’
‘I didn’t like to ask.’
Benedict Doyle appeared to be a perfectly ordinary young man with intelligent eyes and a sudden, very sweet, smile. He was not dissimilar to a good many of Michael’s own students and Michael liked him. Benedict seemed pleased to meet Michael and grateful at being able to thank Nell properly for rescuing him at Holly Lodge.
‘I don’t remember much about it,’ he said, but Michael, who had become accustomed to looking at students’ eyes in case they were taking drugs, saw that Benedict’s eyes slid away when he said this. That was a lie, he thought, and glanced at Nell to see if she had noticed.
But she only said, ‘I didn’t do anything except call the paramedics. You were unconscious when I got there.’
‘Was I? All the time?’
‘You did sort of half come round while we waited for the paramedics,’ said Nell. ‘But you didn’t say much.’
‘Didn’t I? I’m sorry you had a wasted journey, Nell. Will you be able to go back there?’
‘Yes, I’d like to. I think there might be a few interesting things,’ said Nell. ‘I didn’t get the chance to look at anything in any detail – oh, except for a chess
piece I found.’
There was no doubt about Benedict’s reaction this time. Michael thought it was as if the planes of his face shifted, and as if a different person was sitting there. He said, ‘A chess piece?’
‘Yes. I’m going to get it properly appraised, if that’s all right with you,’ said Nell. Michael could not tell if she was aware of the change in Benedict. ‘If the whole set is there it might be worth quite a lot of money. I’ve only found the king so far, though.’
Benedict said, ‘But the king is the most important,’ and Michael looked at him sharply, because his voice had suddenly sounded different. Softer, silkier. Irish? thought Michael. Is this the other persona taking him over? Is this how it happens? He was aware of a faint unease.
Nell said, ‘Do you like what you’re reading at university?’ and Michael realized she had heard the different voice as well, and that the question was meant to bring Benedict back to some kind of reality. ‘Criminology, isn’t it?’
‘Criminology and law. Yes, I do. It’s a very wide subject, but it’s really interesting.’
It’s all right, thought Michael. He’s sounding like himself again.
‘I’ve been doing some research on individual crimes in the late-nineteenth century,’ said Benedict.
‘I should think that would be a rich seam to explore,’ said Nell, sounding interested.
‘It was a wild old place, London,’ said Benedict. ‘You’d never know the half of it, not until you walked through those streets and saw the people . . .’ He looked at them as if he was assessing them, and Michael caught the glint of blue in his eyes. No, surely it was only the light in here. But his unease deepened.
He said, carefully, ‘Benedict, if I can help at any time—’
‘With the criminology course?’
‘With anything,’ said Michael. He fished in his pocket for a card. ‘Here’s my phone number. Ring me if you want to.’
Benedict said, in a voice so low Michael only just caught the words, ‘No one can help me.’ Then the door of the flat was flung noisily open, and a breezy voice called out apologies for being late, but the shops had been full to overflowing with people buying the most frightful junk in the sales – and honestly, if the world was due to end and the four horsemen of the apocalypse were waiting to ride down Oxford Street people would still queue up to get a bargain in the January sales.